A Centipede Snack - a photo on Flickriver

A Centipede Snack

            Cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests leaving the unwitting hosts to rear the young Cuckoos.  In Britain the vast majority of young Cuckoos are raised by just three species; Meadow Pipit, Reed Warbler and Dunnock.  I found this young Cuckoo on the moors a couple of weeks back being brought small items of food by a Meadow Pipit foster parent.  In this case the Pipit is just about to deliver a centipede, which is nothing more than an amuse bouche for this Cuckoo, that was finding its own large caterpillars to feed on.  The young Cuckoo has now grown to six times the body weight of its Pipit parent, yet the constant begging calls and that orange gape urge the pipit to instinctively keep on feeding.

When a Cuckoo lays an egg in a host nest she swiftly removes an egg and delivers an egg in a couple of seconds.  A friend told me that he had seen male and female Cuckoos working in tandem where the male distracts the hosts (small birds always mob Cuckoos) while the female sneaks in and lays an egg, though I'm not aware this behaviour has been documented.  The egg is very small for the Cuckoo's body size, and usually mimics the egg pattern of the host species (but not Dunnock, which lays pure blue eggs).  The egg hatches very swiftly after c12 days, whereas Meadow Pipits take 13-14 days to hatch.  So if the Cuckoo has timed her deception correctly the newly hatched Cuckoo can turf out all other eggs in the nest.  If the nestlings have already hatched the young Cuckoo ejects those.  This ensures that the young Cuckoo receives the undivided attention and food from its hosts.

Taken on: July 26, 2021

Tags:

Cuculus canorus

Juvenile

Meadow

Pipit

Anthus

pratensis

centipede

Peak

District

Moors

South

Yorkshire

Tim Melling « less

Sets appears in: • British Birds

Stats: 5,569 views / 41 comments

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